The Smell of Rain on Dust | Free Book
Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses."
Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, "When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren." These "ghosts," he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as "solidified tears," or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself, and the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering.
At base, this "little book," as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts in all of us.
In The Press
"Martin Prechtel's book is beautifully written and wise … he offers
stories that are precious and life-sustaining. Read carefully, and
listen deeply."
—Mary Oliver
“Here Martín
Prechtel sends us an invitation to peace: to personal, village-level,
and world peace. His indigenous wisdom gives us much-needed insights
into the reverberating impact of not grieving our heart-rending
losses. Most poignantly, he shows us the devastating inheritance of
our ever more voracious wars and the misunderstood burden of ghosts
that swirl around our modern warriors. Yet, instead of leaving us more
despondent, every chapter holds out a new seed, breaking into new
life. Martín coaxes us through funny and quirky turns of the ordinary
and the miraculous to leave us inspired to wake up singing to the
beauty of our rising sun and live in praise of this complex and
gracious world.”
—Inge Hindel, MD/PhD, family and
integrated medicine doctor at Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center,
Oregon
“Martín Prechtel’s genius takes many forms: painting, music, a
continuously evolving learning community, and thank God,
books like this one. I get so excited reading it, I cannot stay
in one place. I sit reading on my porch…then back to my living room to
make a fire and watch Martín’s gorgeously alive prose burn inside me.
His ideas and language are so enlivening, my impulse is to quote great
sections of it. I’ll just touch on a few of his brilliant insights
around how animals help us to grieve, and to make our way out of grief
into the beauty of praising. As he says, animals help us grieve our
loss of naturalness. And we have mostly forgotten ‘the very old
worldwide tribal custom of having a “grief relative” from the wild
living together with us in our houses.’ Caring for animals is a sacred
responsibility. To truly grieve and to weep deeply is something the
animals really do help us with. And O they help us praise too, to
accomplish that most marvelous art of turning the grief into praising.
Martín tells us, ‘Let the world jump up and live again,’ and he makes
that happen with his delicious sentences. Read this necessary, very
beautiful book, and then read it again.”
—Coleman Barks, author of Rumi: Soul Fury
“Many veterans are now
banding into “warrior societies” but do not know which direction to
go. In my work, I see on a daily basis many new patients (veterans)
coming in for help: some with traumatic brain injury (TBI), substance
abuse (mainly alcohol), post-traumatic disorders, and the
all-too-frequent ‘suicide attempt’ with which a new generation of
warriors kick off the repressed memories of Vietnam-era warriors
remembering what was suppressed for so many years, their minds
desperately making an attempt to resolve an ungrieved, ghost-ridden
past. The Smell of Rain on Dust beautifully addresses
the possibility of a society of warriors so changed by having killed
that they become a society of healers to heal those wounded in war,
both old and new.”
—John Ishmael, RN BSN, nurse
physician liaison and discharge planner at Salt Lake City Veterans
Hospital
“Alchemy, by definition, metabolizes and transmutes. A reading of
The Smell of Rain on Dust is alchemical. If the shredding of
the glorious web of life has you sinking into a depth of despair, read
this book; your grief can metabolize and transmute such wrongness.
Deep and delightful, The Smell of Rain on Dust is also
instructive. It will charm you into wanting to live life more
fully, to walk in beauty even amongst modernity’s polarized spiritual
failures.”
—Randy Hayes, director of Foundation Earth and
founder of Rainforest Action Network
“Once again, Martin Prechtel is up to his old tricks … ‘making
medicine out of poison.’ The Smell of Rain on Dust takes grief,
pain, strife, and other elements of a society in distress and concocts
a potion that actually heals those who have ears to listen. In a world
that needs to grieve its wrongdoings but has lost its ability or
forgotten its ancient wisdom to do so, Mr. Prechtel has been selected
as a spokesman to reunite modern man with ancient wisdom. Not an
enviable position!”
—H. Bruce Coslor, Vietnam veteran,
Nebraska cattle rancher, songwriter, musician, and grandfather
“I love Martín’s book. It was amazing reading it aloud to the ocean.
At one point I moved up the coast assuming the listening birds, seals,
and whales would stay, but they moved with me. The waves listened and
the wind. Read this magical book as it takes you into the courtyard of
the heart.”
—M. Bacon, international award-winning
documentary film director and producer
“This wonderful book The Smell of Rain on Dust not only
addresses this culture’s lack of grief but it discusses in poignant
ways how our inability to grieve has created many of our culture’s
delirious, fast paced, toxic, constant state-of-emergency symptoms
where depression, addiction, and mediocrity reign. As a mother,
daughter, teacher, and farmer I found this book to stir up a deep
prayer, that as a people we might, one day, through being with the
depths of our grief, find so much love and deliciousness in being
alive that we praise this life so genuinely, nothing is left
unloved.”
—Melanie MacKinnon, teacher, farmer, and owner
of Frog Belly Farms, Colorado
“I held my personal grief for
decades until, with the help of the author, I ceremonially metabolized
my grief into a thing of beauty. Like a magic genie, I popped out of
the bottle I had crawled into with a renewed love of life. In
The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise, Prechtel leads the
reader down this same trail of animals and life in the womb while
revealing that grief is the sister of praise. Like Prechtel’s other
books, this astonishing book draws me back to reexamine the beauty of
a life lived well.”
—Wick Fisher, retired postmaster,
Vietnam veteran, and orator at soldier funerals
“Brilliant gems of storytelling illuminate teachings of inspiration
and hope in this new work by Martin Prechtel, a work to which he
brings a traditional indigenous understanding of how to deal with
loss.”
—Michael Harner, author of
Cave and Cosmos and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic
Studies
- Title: The Smell of Rain on Dust | Free Book
- Author: Steven
- Created at : 2024-10-25 03:22:40
- Updated at : 2024-10-27 05:05:46
- Link: https://novels-ebooks.techidaily.com/1776791-9781583949405-the-smell-of-rain-on-dust/
- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.